Pre tourney malaise nearly costs Sooners
Saturday's first-round NCAA victory over Florida Gulf Coast too close for comfort
According to the statistical broadcast you can find of every Sooner skirmish, regardless of sport, at oustats.com, the shot hoisted by Florida Gulf Coast’s Uju Ezeudu, coming off an in-bound pass with 0.4 seconds remaining, would have counted, forcing overtime.
So that’s how close coach Jennie Baranczyk’s Oklahoma women, possibly, came to losing their first game of the NCAA tournament Saturday afternoon in Bloomington, Indiana.
It’s too close.
It’s too close against a team with a No. 54 NET rating (OU’s is 28) and a No. 48 RPI (OU’s is 16), playing out of a conference, the Atlantic Sun, carrying a No. 23 RPI while the Big 12 carries a No. 2, trailing only the Pac-12.
Yet, they prevailed.
The final was 73-70 and it was only that, in part, because Aubrey Joens pulled off a magic act of an offensive rebound to put OU on top 64-61 with 4:31 remaining, and it was only that because Joens also hit the biggest shot of the game, a 3-pointer with 1:20 remaining, to put OU back on top 70-68 after giving back a six-point edge attained by a 9-0 run Joens’ previous shot helped propel.
Payton Verhulst netted a deuce after Joens’ 3 and Skylar Vann finished off a 24-point game making one-of-two free throws with 15 seconds remaining.
It wasn’t all Joens.
She finished with only those buckets.
Still, she was the clear X-factor, found money the Sooners would have lost without, which is both an absolute tribute to Joens and not, perhaps, repeatable.
But such are the heroics a better team my require to pull out a contest in which it trailed 16-3 6:04 before the end of the first quarter and 25-11 1:40 before the end of the first quarter.
Perhaps Baranczyk will take some notes, now and later, realizing just how well her team had to play, even with Joens’ X-factor deliveries, to get past a No. 12 seed like the Eagles, because what it took was OU’s best 24 1/2 minutes since, I don’t know, beating Texas in Austin way back on Jan. 24?
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